


Bar Bets

by one_windiga



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Bets, F/F, Unwanted attention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-05
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 18:10:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_windiga/pseuds/one_windiga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It had always been a game. A game without a winner, maybe, but sometimes those were the best sort of games - everyone wanted to be the first. And it kept everyone happy. Granny got the business boost of new customers coming in to give it a whirl. Customers got a kick out of trying. And Ruby got the pleasure of feeling wanted, and of turning them down. She wasn't sure which was better, really."</p>
<p>Customers at the diner can guess Ruby's favorite drink.  If they're right, they get to buy it for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bar Bets

It had always been a game. A game without a winner, maybe, but sometimes those were the best sort of games - everyone wanted to be the first. And it kept everyone happy. Granny got the business boost of new customers coming in to give it a whirl. Customers got a kick out of trying. And Ruby got the pleasure of feeling wanted, and of turning them down. She wasn't sure which was better, really.

The rules were simple. Guess Ruby's favorite drink, and if you got it right, you could take her out after her shift and buy it for her. Naturally, this was quite popular, especially as the night wore on, the customers had a second or third 'one more beer,' and Ruby's skirt somehow magically shortened every time she shifted and moved.

Unfortunately, sometimes the customers didn't take well to losing.

Dr. Whale eyed her from down the counter, slowly swirling his glass around before taking a sip. She generally liked him. He was reasonably cute, he was smart, he tipped well, and he liked her ass. Those were good qualities in a man, as far as Ruby was concerned. But alcohol didn't agree with him. Excessive amounts disagreed with him to the point of picking a fight with his good sense. She generally liked Whale; she didn't like him drunk.

She didn't pause in wiping down the counter a few seats away, despite feeling his eyes on her. Instead, she just tossed her hair back over her shoulders, out of the way of her washcloth, and scrubbed a stubborn coffee ring off of the formica.

"Margaritas," he finally said, smirking. Ruby glanced up, this time meeting his eyes. She looked him up and down, and his smirk widened. She scowled. He thought he knew her. He thought he had her pegged, and worse, he thought he was going to have her pegged tonight.

That was what she hated most about people. She wore the clothes she wanted and the makeup that made her lips pouty and suddenly everyone thought they had a right to her. That somehow she stopped having a choice in the matter the moment she put on her heels and tied up her shirt in a midriff. It didn't seem to matter that she could make her preferences quite clear - hell, she'd flirt with almost anyone in the bar, and she'd let a lot of them take her home. But that didn't mean she'd given up the right to say no.

"Bzzt," she said, with an unimpressed quirk of her lips that wasn't a smile at all. Unfortunately, Whale was too drunk to tell the difference.

"Oh, come on!"

"It's not margaritas. You can try again tomorrow." With that, she flicked her washcloth into the sink and grabbed the pitcher of ice water, high heels clicking across the linoleum to one of the little two-person tables.

"Need a refill?" The smile she cast to Mary Margaret was a real one, not the thin blade of a look she'd given to Whale.

Mary Margaret looked up quickly from her paperback and smiled back briefly. "Hm? Oh! Yes. Thank you, Ruby."

"No problem," Ruby said, grabbing her glass and filling it up. The ice splashed, clinking lightly against the rim of the cup, and she set it down none too gently. The slight crinkle around Mary Margaret's eyes signaled sympathy. "Long day?"

"No! No, I can handle the work just fine."

"So," Mary Margaret said, pausing a moment. "Not the work. ... Doctor Whale?" she guessed.

It earned her a scowl from Ruby. The expression normally looked rather at odds with blood red lipstick and thick mascara, but it somehow suited Ruby just fine.

"So it is Doctor Whale."

"Shh," Ruby hissed, glancing around. "I'm not allowed to talk about customers at work."

"Right! Sorry." Mary Margaret winced apologetically. "I didn't think anyone could hear, over here."

"Probably not, but you know Granny. She's the best at being where she needs to be to hear everything you don't want her to."

Raising her glass to her lips to hide a soft giggle, Mary Margaret nodded a hair. Ruby grinned back, then lofted her pitcher up and headed across the diner to take away yet another coffee cup from a student cramming for exams. After that was rolling the clean silverware in napkins and refilling the salt dispensers.

Eventually, though, she had to make her way back to the counter, where Dr. Whale was sitting. Inwardly, she braced herself.

“So you’re saying it’s _not_ margaritas,” he said, as if their conversation hadn’t ended fifteen minutes ago.

Ruby sighed. “I’m sorry, what part of ‘no’ didn’t make sense?”

“You’re just saying that so you don’t have to fill your end of the bargain,” he parried, leaning forward on his elbows.

“No, I’m saying it because I don’t like margaritas,” she said sweetly, but her smile was chilly. It was painful, sometimes, holding back from mouthing off. If she hadn’t been at work, he would have gotten an earful, she told herself, and dried off another glass.

“Fine. Whiskey, then.”

Ruby’s hand stilled on the damp washcloth. “You only get one guess a night. If you want to try again, you have to come back.”

Whale scowled.

"Those are the rules," she said, tucking a dry glass up onto the shelf.

"I said, _whiskey_ ," he repeated. "That's it, isn't it? I'm right."

The cloth squeaked as Ruby rubbed it harder against the glass, knuckles turning a little white. "One guess a night."

"There aren't any limits on where I can take you to buy you your drink, are there? Because I've got some great whiskey at home. You'd love it."

"I've had whiskey before. I'm pretty sure it's all sort of the same."

"No, really, it's fantastic. I swear, you'd love it. And I can think of some other things you'd love," he concluded with a grin.

She said nothing, scowling at the glass like it had done her wrong.

It seemed that Whale didn't actually require her to speak to hold up a conversation. "You can come over after your shift," he added.

She slammed the glass down onto the counter. Something inside her was a little surprised that it didn't shatter, but that was for the best. The last thing she needed as a sliced up hand and broken glass all over the floor. That would just be the ending on the night.

"Doctor Whale, I am just about fucking f-"

The clink of a plate being set down in front of her cut her off. She looked over in surprise to see Mary Margaret standing there, leaning over the stool next to Whale's.

"Sorry to interrupt," she said with a bit of a forced smile. She tucked a bit of hair behind her ears.

Ruby knew that look. Everyone else might buy that Mary Margaret was the innocent, doe-eyed angel all the time, but she knew better. She saw the spark of sharp humor in the way Mary Margaret flicked her eyes between the plates, Whale, and Ruby. She wasn't sorry to interrupt in the least. She was stepping in on purpose.

"Mary Margaret," Whale began, pausing as his inebriated brain tried to figure out a way that he could get her to back off without being a cad. Nobody wanted to be cruel to Mary Margaret. Not, at least, after the murder scare had faded and she had regained that angelic glow she always had. She was _Mary Margaret._

Her bright and unchallenging smile widened slightly. She knew exactly what was going on in Whale's head, and she'd been counting on it. The little witch, Ruby thought admiringly. She found herself grinning a bit, and forced the expression off of her face when Whale looked back her way.

"Yes, Doctor Whale?" The tone was so innocent Ruby had to bite her lip to keep from snorting.

"... Ruby and I were... having a conversation," he finally said.

Ruby rolled her eyes. That was one way to put it.

"Yes, I heard, I'm so sorry to drop in like that. You were talking about her favorite drink, am I right?"

Whale frowned, his attempt to politely foist her off headed off at the pass. "Yes, but -"

"So any customer gets a guess?"

The growing consternation on Whale's face was difficult to miss. He repeated, with more audible frustration, " _Yes_ , but -"

"Is it hot cocoa?" Mary Margaret ignored Whale entirely, looking to Ruby for confirmation.

For a moment, she found herself staring back in shock. She opened her mouth, shut it again, and let it twist in a strange new shade of confusion and pleasant surprise. "... Yeah," she finally said, and let her hands fall to rest on her hips in the habit she hadn't been able to break. "Yeah, it is."

" _Hot cocoa?!_ " Whale protested.

"Don't you have an early shift tomorrow, Doctor? Maybe you should get home and rest," was the helpful response from Mary Margaret, all fluttering hands and polite worry.

Whale grumbled a moment under his breath, then set his bills down on the counter, grabbed his coat, and tromped out of the diner.

Ruby watched him go, then looked back to the smiling face in front of her. Now that Whale was out of sight, her grin had taken a bit of a darkly amused edge. Ruby found that she liked it. She liked it quite a bit.

"How did you know? Everyone always guesses alcohol."

Mary Margaret laced her fingers together over the counter slowly. "That's because they only see the Ruby you dress up to be. But nobody's that one dimensional. Especially not you."

Ruby felt a smile slowly curling its way across her lips. Not a smirk or a grin or a pout, but an honest, warm smile.

"And," Mary Margaret added, glancing up at her from beneath her eyelashes with a smaller, hesitant smile, "I make excellent hot cocoa."

Resting her elbows on the counter and leaning in close until she could smell the scent of cookies on Mary Margaret, Ruby licked her devil-red lips and flicked a lock of short, dark hair out of Mary Margaret's eyes. "Then stick around. My shift's almost up."  



End file.
